Yardley, Jonathan

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University of Rhode IslandDigitalCommons@URIObscenity: News Articles (1989) Education: National Endowment for the Arts andHumanities, Subject Files II (1962-1996)1989Obscenity: News Articles (1989): Editorial 09Jonathan YardleyFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/pell_neh_II_58This Editorial is brought to you for free and open access by the Education: National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, Subject Files II(1962-1996) at DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Obscenity: News Articles (1989) by an authorized administrator ofDigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@etal.uri.edu.Recommended CitationYardley, Jonathan, "Obscenity: News Articles (1989): Editorial 09" (1989). Obscenity: News Articles (1989). Paper 39.http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/pell_neh_II_58/39http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/pell_neh_II_58/39-C2 MONDAY,JULY31,1989 ... RI THE WASH!~ JONATHAN YARDLEY Helms a.nd the Art of Pragmatism Those members Of the· Senate who bad the · misfortune to be on the .floor of that chamber last · Wednesday may have had little f . . choice in the matter, but they ,, a?rtainly allowed Jesse Helms to make fools of them. The Republican from North Carolina, as wily and contemptible a · charactet as one could hope to meet in public life, came in from the blue with just the kind of · , legislation that politicians dread: a bill they can scarcely afford to vote against, yet one that makes them look foolish, and even philistine, ror supporting it. This was, of course, the · . by-now-notorious amendment to a $10.9 billion appropriations bill , the beneficiaries of which-include the National Endowment for the "'' , Arts. The Helms amendment, it will be recalled, prohibits NEA -:- · support for "obscene or indecent v materials, including but not : · . limited to depictions of ,,. sadomasochism, homoeroticism, : : the exploitation of children, or fudividuals engaged in sex acts; or material which denigrates ~e ~. . objects or beliefs of the . adherents of a particular religion , · · or non-religion; or ~terial which denigrates, debases, or reviles a person, group, or class of citizens ·' · on the basis of race, creed, sex, . handicap, age, or national origin. n Naturally, the amendment ... passed by voice vote. What politician, presented with a thumbs-up-or-down decision and no time .to contemplate its subtler ramifications~ could be -expected to vote against it? Like . a quarterback deploying his receivers m every area of the secondary, Helms had.all his grotind covered: Not merely did his amendment force his fellow senators to vote against obsCenity and indecency, but it also put the~ foursquare against child expl9itation, blasphemy and-this coming froni· a senator who has reaped political hay from the Negrophobia With which many in North Carolina"(and, for . that matter, other states as well) are still.afflicted-racial prejudice. · By the Senators' o\vn te5timony, Helms left them no choice. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, who usually can be counted on to mouth the day's liberal pieties, rose "to indicate my cone.em" about "the United · . States Congress deciding what is · or isn't art, n but then conf~: . "I'm not going to opPC>se it because it's hard to oppose an amendment of this kind because it sounds so right." Thus was . another fly caught in Jesse's , spider web. · the heat of the moment. No doubt once the ~emperature goes · down and House and Senate meet to iron..out the differences ' between their bills-the House version is far less punitive than the.Senate's-something. approximating a ,reasonable compromise can be reached. Within hours of the amendment's apprpval, people were beginning to realize that it is open to interpretations so broad as to forbid NEA funding for just about anything; by the time the arts lobby and its friends on the Hill · have finished explicating all the amendment's self-evident · weaknesses, Co~gress is likely to approve a bill that the NEA and its constituency can live with. · But that will not be the end of the matter. The Helms . aniendment, shabby though it . · . certainly is, has supparters not . merely because it endorses motherhood and apple pie; it also appeals to a legitimate concern about the kinds of art t!tat public funds .are allocated to . underwrite, and the way that · allocation is updertaken. There is a widespread sense, by n'o means restricted to irresponsible or demagogic politicians, that the arts community wants it ootb-ways-generous public support · -for the arts; but no public voice in· how th.is support is used-arid . that this is patently unacceptable~. In responding to th.is ·public sentiment, the arts community ' has been both arrogant and naive. The sense of entitlement among artis~s and museum di.-ectors is, -when you get right do-WO to it, astonishing~ The director of the Brooklyn Museum told the New York Times, evidently with a straight race, "A hands-off posture for the endowment is vital," which is to say: Give u~ · taxpayers' money via the NEA, but keep their dirty hands off our spending policies. If a defense contractor demanded carte blanche ·over its expenditur~.-of . federal .funds~ the public outcry would be ear-splitting, and no one· would howl louder than the . public interest. Nothing could be further from the truth. People who know the workings of the NEA and NEH say that the single· most formidable obstacle to responsible allocation of grants is peerrevie1N.Ratherthan represent the public's interests, too many of these panels represent those of their own artistic and scho1arly cliques; they dole out money to allies and proteges, feather their own nests and keep it all in' the family. Th.is inast eertainly is not what Congress bad in mind when it stipulated peer review; . presumably it expected that expert opinion could separate the deservingfrom the wtdeserving, not that it would be used to citcle the wagons around the aits and . bumaniti~ e5tab~sbments. But that is precisely what has happened, ~d the system is now so thoroughly entrenched that prospects of reforming it seem dim atl>est; congress can huff and puff as much as it likes about the "obscene" art of Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, but the machinery is firmly in place to produce more such controversies in the future. The truth is that much though it bleats about the Helms. _ amendment, the arts community. has had things pretty much to its · own liking, if not the public's, at NEA:This surely has contributed to the arrogance with which it greets .aily and every suggestion that the public should have a voice'in how tfie public's money is spent; it's been slopping at the trough long enough to have ' developed a habit, and it's not about to let anyone else tell it what, or how much, it should eat. This arrogance is compounded by the naivete with which the arts community enters the political arena. It seems genuinely to believe that its affairs are "above" politiCs-that because it deals in what it likes to believe are the exalted precincts of art, it is wiaccountable ~ anyone except itself for its actions. The hard truth~ though. is that.anyone who deals with politicians does so on their terms: · limoqsine Jlbera1s in the art galleries} yet th~ same people actually expect taxpayers to nod approvingly while tax dollars go· to projects approved by no one · except artists and their · He that lies with the dogs riseth . with fleas. Accountability is the sine qua non of politics, and none cari escape it: the representative ja_nizaries. Ah yes, the arts community says in response to public objections, but the public interest · is protected by "peer review ... · NEA grant applications must be approved by panels of "experts" in their artistic fields-the same is true at.NEA's twin, the National Endowment for the Humanities~who, we are to believe, represent the broad · · accountable tO his constituents, the appointee accowrtable to his patron. the grant recipient accountable to his donor. It is a rule to which there are no exceptions, as any defeated politician will tell you, and the, sooner the arts community accepts it, the sooner it will be able to cope with reality. But of course, reality may be as alien to it as accountability. -P--: - -0~ ~e amendment pa~ ,in -~-~--

Obscenity: News Articles (1989): Editorial 09

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Obscenity: News Articles (1989): Editorial 09

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